


Levi the Professional

by mybrainproblems



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Assassins & Hitmen, Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Underage Relationship(s), M/M, Minor Character Death, One-Sided Attraction, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1778536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybrainproblems/pseuds/mybrainproblems
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leon the Professional except more depressing.</p><p>Check the tags for triggers but nothing is particularly graphic which is why I'm leaving it with a T rating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Levi the Professional

**Author's Note:**

> This was a prompt thing that popped up on my dash on Tumblr via humanitys-otp-roundup that was based off of Leon the Professional (which is an amazing movie and you should go watch it if you haven't) where Levi comes from an abusive family and gets taken in by Kenny Ackerman and is trained to be a hit man as well and then years later he runs into Eren who is living with a shitty foster family.
> 
> I legit just wrote this flat out and didn't edit it so uh yeah.  
> Also angst and awful abound. Like wow.  
> It was very nearly way worse.

At six he was already coming home to an apartment that may as well have been empty.

At seven he wished that it were actually empty.

At eight he already knew how to hide the cuts and burns and bruises and lie about the ones he couldn’t.

At nine he was oh-so-very-bright but it was oh-so-very-impossible to show up every day when leaving your room meant a “love tap” to the face and those you couldn’t hide.

At ten a man moved in next door.

 

The gossipy ladies on the stoop with their bottle blonde hair talked about the man in apartment 3C and what a nice boy he seemed; quiet, put-together, respectful. He’s unmarried, Gillian – maybe your daughter should get on that. A nudge and a wink and a laugh; she would herself if she were younger, husband be damned. Shrieks of merriment, cue the laugh track, fade to black.

The man worked mostly nights but he waited out on the landing. There was nothing for him in apartment 3B except for obscenities and beatings and things that were too old for his too-young-now-old eyes.

On a Wednesday at four-thirty in the morning, Levi met Kenny Ackerman.

 

Levi looked up at the taller man with silent eyes drowned out by the screams coming from 3B. The man spared him a brief appraising glance, taking in his appearance. Taking in the dirt and the bruises and the worn-out clothes. Taking in the dead, emotionless eyes. Taking in the waif of a survivor barely standing before him. Taking in the curious and pleading eyes.

“Go home, brat.”

The man pushed him aside and walked by.

Levi sat in the stairwell and didn’t sleep.

The cycle continued; beatings, screaming, not-sleeping in the stairwell. Every so often he would see the man in apartment 3C.

Occasionally the cycle would break and he would mete out punishment to the neighborhood bullies. Violence was natural at this point. He couldn’t take on one of Red’s men, but he could sure as hell send Gillian’s son to the hospital for eighteen stitches in his head, never mind the five year age gap.

One morning he hid under the couch while everyone screamed and guns flashed metallic pain into bodies. He was never as grateful to be malnourished as he was on that day. And when the blood finally stopped flowing and began to pool in sticky iron puddles he got up and walked out the door. He didn’t look at the bodies, he never had any parents anyway.

He banged on the door of apartment 3C for fifteen minutes straight before the man came to the door.

Kenny Ackerman saw a kid on his doorstep; he had vowed never to harm women or children and looking at the carnage that the kid was covered in, shutting the door in his face was the same as putting a bullet in the kid’s head himself. Regardless of his age he was a witness and Red didn’t leave witnesses go.

Kenny Ackerman saw the cold fire in his eyes and saw a blade to be honed.

At eleven he walked through a door and never looked back.

 

At eleven he learned how to clean guns and stitch wounds.

He told him that he could leave.

He told him that he had seen worse.

 

At fourteen Levi Ackerman went on his first job. Even a lookout needs to be armed.

Kenny’s shots weren’t the only ones that rang out that night.

 

At fifteen he read about the assassinated diplomat’s daughter having her throat slashed as well. The diplomat’s bodyguards claimed they had shot the perpetrator but he got away.

He had stitched up a bullet wound last night.

 

At sixteen he went on his first solo job.

Only one soul made it out alive.

 

At seventeen he sat in the kitchen drinking milk and smoking a cigarette while business was discussed in the living room.

A husband wanted his wife killed in an attempted robbery. The five year-old didn’t matter – illegitimate, not his.

He grabbed his jacket and the suitcase he always kept packed and walked out the door before he could even hear what the job was worth.

 

At eighteen he was truly on his own.

 

At twenty-one he was the best.

Kenny’s protégé; bullets rolled off him like water.

Like his mentor he had few scruples with who he worked for.

Unlike his mentor he had a moral compass – broken as it was, it still had a direction it pointed. It just wasn’t due north anymore.

 

At twenty-four he moved into an apartment indefinitely until the heat from his last job wore off.

At twenty-four he met a kid, bloodied and bruised and standing in stairwell while an argument raged on in the apartment behind him.

At twenty-four a set of brilliant green too-young-now-old eyes pleaded with him.

“Go home, brat.”

Up another flight of stairs and behind a door he set water to boil, lit a cigarette and had a glass of milk.

 

The next time he ran into that particular set of eyes he was walking up the stairs and trying not to hear the yelling that echoed through the stairwell. He was halfway to the landing when he saw the kid get thrown out the door, a mess of bruises and blood and welts. He shook slightly as he grabbed the railing to stand.

Levi stood rooted to the spot as he watched the kid try to stand up and nearly collapse again, clutching his side and panting. Eyes snapped to meet his and he could see fire laid low but not gone.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, brat.”

 

It became a habit after that. Levi knew that he didn’t show up every time he got into a fight or beaten; there were far too many unfamiliar partially-healed bruises between visits. But gradually he learned things about the kid that he didn’t want to learn. He didn’t want this kid to be human.

He was fourteen-almost-fifteen.

He was in the foster care system.

His last family was worse – he didn’t say how and Levi didn’t ask.

He wanted to be a veterinarian.

The kid’s name was Eren.

He was smart enough not to ask what Levi did.

 

Their odd friendship went on for the remaining two months of Levi’s stay. When Ricardo called to let him know the heat had passed he began to pack. He had accumulated more in two and a half months than he had in the preceding twenty-four years. Almost everything went into the trash. He found himself staring at a mostly-full box of hot cocoa mix. He should throw it away, no that would be a waste. He should leave it with the kid, no that wasn’t a good idea.

It needed to be a clean break.

No sentiment.

 

He had packed up the car the night before. All he had to do was wake up, get his coat and suitcase and walk downstairs. He stretched and dressed slowly staring at the room that was never really his, no real personal affects ever graced the walls or shelves.

The open door revealed a body, barely standing from exhaustion and the run-in with his foster brother the other day.

“Please. Take me with you.”

Eyes pleading harder than his caught voice.

Levi saw the fire in his eyes and saw a blade whose edge he could never sharpen.

“Go home, brat.”

 

When the kid reached out to grab his arm his instincts took over and the kid got slammed into a wall.

Wide eyes stared at him, pleading not for a savior but for answers.

He could hear it.

_You were supposed to be different. You patched me up when people did this to me. You’re supposed to be different._

And now he was on one knee staring at the kid collapsed against the wall.

“I’m a dangerous man. I’m not a safe person to be with.”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t know what I do.”

“What are you, huh? A hit man for the mob?” The kid attempted a laugh.

“Freelance. It’s better; you get to pick your jobs.”

Dumbfounded green eyes met his, face totally unguarded and in shock.

His features snapped back into place.

“I don’t care.”

“And if I say no again?”

“I’ll fight you until you take me.”

“You may have a few inches on me, but that’s not going to do shit for you, kid.”

“I’ll get the stuff off the top shelves for you.”

 

He looked at the messy brown hair ruffling in the breeze from his open window as the kid slept on the passenger seat. This was undoubtedly the worst decision that he had ever made. He just took a kid out of the frying pan and into the fire with him. This kid – _Eren_ – was never going to become what he was.

He would make sure of that.

His compass pointed a little closer to north.

 

They settled in a new city and Levi insisted that the kid finish high school; learn to read better than Levi could. Funny thing about having a hit man take you in when you’re eleven is that they tend to not have a lot of time to teach you how to read any better than when you first got there.

The kid got a relatively normal life. Levi met with clients, did recon and cleaned the tools of his trade all while the kid was in school. There was never any hint of his job in the apartment when the kid was. He didn’t need that in his life and Levi damn well wasn’t going to drag the kid down into the filth with him.

It was a peaceful year.

Peace doesn’t last forever though.

 

Kenny Ackerman came to visit.

Levi was cleaning the kitchen and Eren was going to be home from school soon when the door was kicked in.

One thing that Levi never told the kid directly was that he always kept a gun on him. He assumed that the kid had noticed that he always had it with him, he was far more observant than anyone gave him credit for being.

Unfortunately, a year of peace in his own home was a year of complacency and reflexes dulled by peace betrayed him.

He was on his knees with a gun to his head when the kid walked into the kitchen.

 

Something snapped in him. The threat of losing the only person who had even remotely cared about him spurred him into action. He had been in fights with other kids at school and it never crossed his mind that the man he was about to try and take down had a gun or that the fact that he had Levi completely defenseless spoke to his immense skill and experience. What crossed his mind was that he wasn’t going to let Levi die.

If he had stopped to think, he wouldn’t have grabbed a kitchen knife and run at the other man, but if he had stopped to think he probably wouldn’t have stabbed him before he got to properly aim the gun. The inhuman shriek that escaped him as he lunged forward to stab the other man again set Levi into motion.

It would not happen like this.

Had he been thinking rationally, he would have gone for his former mentor while he was still reeling from the kid’s attack. He wouldn’t have gone to grab the knife from the kid.

But that’s what happened.

Reflexes kicked in and he had the knife at the other man’s throat before he could catch his balance again. They stared at each other, claws out but one fading fast.

“Why are you here?”

“Old client wants a loose end tied up.”

“Who?”

“You know I won’t tell you.”

“You’re bleeding out, tell me who and I’ll end it faster.”

“Worried about your pretty little pet?”

“Kid, go.”

“Le –”

“ _Eren_. Get out of here _now_.”

He listened for the sound of the kid’s footsteps and his bedroom door closing.

Kenny Ackerman got a second mouth.

One of Ricardo’s men arrived shortly thereafter to take care of things.

 

“Hey, can I come in?”

“Door’s open.”

The kid was sitting curled up into himself on his bed. His eyes were glassy and wet and Levi had thought that his eyes couldn’t look any older then they had before; he had been wrong.

A second count against his dulled reflexes came when the kid launched himself at him and pulled him close. His name being repeated around choked sobs and he could smell the kid’s fear and he could feel his own rising because he knew what this was and then there were lips on his and he was pushing the kid away for a second time.

“You’re _sixteen_.”

Fear became laced with anger.

Those eyes were pleading for answers from the floor for a second time and this time he didn’t have any.

He walked out.

Levi was half way to the building’s front exit when the kid caught up.

“Where are you going? Levi? Please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me, please don’t…” He was sobbing into Levi’s shoulder now and it was all he could do to not shove him away. He wasn’t going to do this. He had promised himself that he wouldn’t make the same mistakes that his own mentor had.

This wasn’t love, this was Stockholm Syndrome.

He disentangled himself gently and looked up into those sad green too-young-now-old eyes and saw someone who needed a parent, not a killer and certainly not a lover.

A hand on the kid’s cheek. Was it overstepping bounds? Was this okay?

“Go home, brat.”

He didn’t need to turn around to know that tears were running down the kid’s face.

 

At nineteen he graduated high school with more experience with the harsh realities of the world than the rest of his class.

At nineteen he fulfilled a promise to man who gave him some semblance of stability.

At nineteen he looked out into the audience as everyone threw their caps and saw a familiar set of too-young-now-old eyes.

He blinked.

They were gone.


End file.
